Whenever he’s asked about the genesis of
There is truth to that. Rovak, like millions of other Americans, found himself in a situation where he suddenly became responsible for the finances of an aging parent.
But what really lit a fire under him was the time he spent as CEO of product innovation firm Fahrenheit 212, where he led the creation of new products for Fortune 500 companies across financial services and other industries. When Fahrenheit 212 was acquired by information technology firm Capgemini in 2016, Rovak became CEO of Capgemini Consulting North America.
“The idea really came from advisors. It was time spent with Charles Schwab. It was time spent with the Vanguards of the world,” Rovak told Financial Planning. “They wanted to find the life stages where they could help and identify the trigger moments where we could be more useful. They had a staggering aging population to serve and no answers.”
The other problem, Rovak said, is that when financial service firms define life stages and deploy solutions to help at those pivotal moments, the same old topics dominate the conversation time and time again.
Marriage. Divorce. Having children. Retirement.
“That’s kind of it, and you can’t make more life,” Rovak said. “But there's about 45 million people in the U.S. alone who are involved in their parents' finances. They're logging in. They're helping out. They're moving money around. It’s the same amount of people who have student loans, yet nobody talks about them.
“I've never seen a more underserved human being in financial services and planning than a financial caregiver … somebody that's been pulled into this with no tools, no permissions, no experience, no help. Nothing.”
Carefull, founded in 2019, aims to change that by integrating transaction and financial behavior monitoring, family financial communication and educational content into a mobile platform. Rovak said Carefull allows family members and other caregivers to build a secure "circle of care" around an elderly loved one while keeping their dignity and independence intact.
The goal, he said, is to bring simplicity, intelligence and tools to a complicated part of life that is much longer than people realize and comes with plenty of change along the way.
“Being old is not a moment. It's an entire life stage that has different phases and four big trigger moments,” he said. “There’s a trigger moment when a kid is pulled in to help a parent that is still independent but just needs a second set of eyes. There's a trigger moment when the kid is basically copiloting and logging in. There's total takeover, and there's wind down. So Carefull is building an infrastructure and the tools for all of this 20-year life stage.”
He added that the problem isn’t one that is going away on its own, and it’s often accompanied by other major shifts. According to a
The study also found that these caregivers spend $190 billion per year on adult care recipients. Despite that, 91% of caregivers said they are grateful they could be there to provide care while 77% “would gladly do so again.”
Carefull raised $3.2M in seed funding led by
But instead of monitoring a credit score, Carefull monitors financial behaviors and relies on rule-based AI to spot irregularities or possible fraud targeting a client’s accounts.
“We’ve built an AI engine that looks for things that people can't spot, advisors can't spot and banks don't look for today,” Rovak said. “We look for charitable donations, for example. Your bank doesn't care if you're making charitable donations, but I do care if your aging parents are. Why? Because they have relatively impaired judgment when they do that and like to give money away. Political donations as well … because both political parties convinced older adults the world was ending, had them sign up for recurring deductions and they didn't know it.
“So here's your tweet from congressperson so and so. You sign up and give 10 bucks. And suddenly you have a deduction that comes out every month.”
Rovak said duplicate payments and decreased pharmacy spending are also examples of the kinds of red flags Carefull looks for. Caregivers then get that information and can determine if or how to intervene.
“Say your pharmacy spend drops by two-thirds. Another (personal financial management) app will say ‘good job. You saved money and you're under budget.’ But it actually means that you may not be taking care of yourself if you're over 65,” he said.
He adds that Carefull’s AI isn’t powered by a one-size-fits-all set of rules. Instead, the platform looks at years of personal financial history to determine what normal looks like for every family.
What can be gleaned from such an analysis is eye-opening and potentially life changing, Rovak said. He cited
In addition to monitoring, Carefull works to create a circle of trusted contacts for each client. Once established, those people are permissioned to receive account alerts pertaining to their loved ones. There are also solutions for password management and document management to take the stress out of emergency situations.
“It sounds like something small, but your parents need a password manager because they're the keys to the financial kingdom. And what they're doing is writing things down and sticking it in a drawer, or putting it on a Post-It note and sticking it on their computer,” Rovak said. “Then when an advisor asks them for information, kids have to go dig through things and basically go CSI on their parents to find account information. Technology should do all this lift, and what the advisor really needs is a trusted contact spine that creates infrastructure between generations before there's a crisis moment.”
The final pillar of Carefull’s three-pronged approach is education.
Putting it all together, Rovak believes Carefull has the potential to create stronger bonds between advisors with aging clients and the family members who will eventually become the family’s next financial leaders.
“You have $24 trillion in wealth transfer in motion, and nine out of 10 people will not use their parents' advisor. So if you divorce yourself from the human problem that we're talking about and you look at it from the advisor standpoint, now you have something that is a massive problem for people as well as a commercial problem for advisors,” he said. “If I’m an advisor, I have no relationship continuity. I have no cross-generational connectivity … to the kids I’m just ‘dad’s guy.’ This creates more ways to get involved.”
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